


Fate-Touched

by Fourier



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Fate, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-25 19:12:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10770639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fourier/pseuds/Fourier
Summary: You see him in passing for the first time when he is thirteen years old. He does not see you; he does not even know of you. It will be years, for him, before he first hears the name they call you.-The Raven Queen, and her champion.





	Fate-Touched

You see him in passing for the first time when he is thirteen years old. He does not see you; he does not even know of you. It will be years, for him, before he first hears the name they call you.

But you see him—this tangled mass of fate-heavy threads, this boy inching towards you, not yet ready, but _wanting_ —and you know have found your Champion.

*

You see him again when he is nineteen. Without the thrill of discovery behind it, the feeling of capture, of triumph, it just looks sad. 

You send a raven to sit with him on the window until his sister finds him. 

When she does, you hear her screams reverberate through his fatelines.

* 

(Curious girl, that sister of his. Twins, half-human half-elven, cut from the same cloth, once the same and split only in their mothers’ womb. They are intractable from one another, lines knotted and interwoven, more tightly than you have seen for many millennia. She, too, should be as he is—the center of a web, ripples across time.

But she has done something, that curious girl. Walled herself off. Pulled away, with immeasurable strength. You can see where the threads ought to reach her; she has ripped them out, bloody and painful. They dangle, still entwined, with her brother’s. But she is an island, unreachable.

You are not sure what you shall do with her, if you ever have her.)

* 

He does not walk so steadfastly towards you, after that. Perhaps it was leaving that black-hearted, consumptive man that slicked his fate-threads heavy with the weight of him. Perhaps it was that sister of his, the way she twisted the two of them together ever-tighter, as though she wanted to keep him away from you without knowing you were there.

It does not concern you. All paths lead to you, in the end. He will see that eventually. 

You do, once, glimpse his friend—that fierce,  sunbright cleric girl.  You do not see him, then, but you _feel_ him—woven into every inch of her, desperate to pull her back. You doubt, for the first time. In his ability to let go of anything, once he has sunken his fingers in.

When she goes (and of course she must go, there is so _much_ of her left in the world), she leaves the color in her hair with you. Perhaps as a reminder she will be back for it, someday.

*

Finally, finally—he sees you.

You should have known it would be that girl, that sister, that entanglement. They were too tightly tied for it to be anything else. But then, there are things about death and fates and destiny that even you do not know. 

You offer his sister’s heart. He offers his in return.

The threads pull taut around him—they sing, like the strings of a harp, with the tension of it, with the weight, with the ripple-effect that spreads through your domain. You do not have to look for him, anymore: he is _here_ , as much as you are.

You smile. It has been a long time since you have smiled.

He sees you, his sister’s heart in your palms, held out to him for the taking. He sees you: your Champion, your earthly self, _you_ born in _him._ He sees you, and he hates you.

It rolls off him in waves: contempt, anger, betrayal, fear. Emotions that have clouded his mind since that first glimpse. They will not leave him for some time; you think, sometimes, when you see the many paths laid out before him, that perhaps they can never entirely leave him.

But then, neither can you.


End file.
